


And The Gods are Silent (when you ask them why)

by Chimaera-Writes (ChimaeraKitten)



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Angst, Archaeology, F/M, Happy Ending, I Promise it Ends Happy, I am not original, IM SAYING HAPPY ENDING NOW SO YOU GUYS DONT KILL ME, Immortality, Mentions of Cancer, Non-Graphic Violence, Poison, Song Lyric Title, Vomiting, but I scrapped those parts for simplicity, references to alternate history, the first draft had more in common with the title song, yes editing we do not die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26124991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChimaeraKitten/pseuds/Chimaera-Writes
Summary: “She thought of Nahuseresh. How many poisons did he have at his command? How many allies did he have among her barons? How easy would it have been to arrange the death of a successful rival?”—Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia, page 242“In the water of life,” said the Sky, “the coleus will not harm you. But it has made the cup bitter as I will make your life bitter,”—Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief, page 95Or, an AU which Eugenides is poisoned in more ways than one.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 32
Kudos: 53





	And The Gods are Silent (when you ask them why)

**Author's Note:**

> _“And you watch them age and you watch them die as you race the light wind across the sky/ And the gods are silent when you ask them why.../ you’ve left behind you the world of men with no way in hell to go home again...”_ —Julia Ecklar and Anne Prather, “[Pushing the Speed of Light](https://youtu.be/ud6LiVJkwyA)”

Kamet pressed the coin into the servant woman’s palm. It was a double stater: an outrageous bribe, for what it bought, but Nahuseresh was taking no chances with the death of the Eddisian. After the coin followed the packet of poison. It was nothing special, just a powdered local plant, but his master had insisted that it must be _this_ poison to kill Eddis’s thief.

“The _red_ pouch in my desk,” he had emphasized in the few moments Kamet stole to surreptitiously converse with his master. And because Nahuseresh loved being clever he explained, “She has used this poison before, and the Eddisians will think it was her doing. Her new alliance will vanish like dust in the wind.”

As Kamet turned away from the white-haired and white-clothed servant, a great sympathy for the queen of Attolia almost overcame him. What a fate, to return from victorious battle to find slain the key to peace.

* * *

“Eugenides.”

The voice woke him suddenly, but by the time he sat up and blinked the blur out of his eyes the only remnant of who had spoken was the whip of white fabric around the closing door of the chamber. He shouldn’t have lain on the bed, he realized. If he must sleep, he should be facing the door.

He swung his legs down, and that was when he realized that there was another clue to his visitor—a tray of food and a cup of wine sat on the floor next to the bed.

There had been food twice already. Two meals he had not touched, and his stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate.

A few hours ago he had seen two soldiers, one Attolian and one Eddisian, walk past his window sharing a casual conversation. Looking at the meal before him, he thought that Irene wouldn’t poison him if she had allied with Eddis over the Mede, or rather he hoped she had nothing to gain by doing so.

He slid slowly to the floor on protesting muscles and reached for the bread. He noted that the meal _was_ suited for a man with one hand, but that was more likely because it was in truth suited for a prisoner not allowed utensils than because there had been any real consideration for his needs.

He smelled the bread carefully and examined it for signs of rot before he took a bite. Finding no obvious fault in it or any of the other foods (he skipped the olives; it was too easy to conceal poison in their strong taste) he ate the meal with the desperate efficiency of the truly hungry.

His throat was still dry even after all the food and he eyed the wine. It was watered, judging by its transparency, and nothing smelled off about it. But wine could hide smells. The lighting of the room was too dim to tell if its color was wrong.

He was so thirsty.

He held the glass and swirled it around, then tipped it into his mouth to take a sip. At first, he thought the slight burn as it slid down his throat was just the burn of cheap wine. He took a larger sip before his lips began to sting.

The cup fell from his hand and broke into pieces on the floor, spilling wine like dark blood across the stones. He felt it soaking into his clothes as he shoved his fingers into the back of his throat. He folded forward as he wretched, emptying his stomach as quickly as he could. His hook skittered across the stones when he went to rest his weight on that arm, and he avoided pitching face forward into his own sick only by catching himself on his left elbow.

He held there, shaking and blinking involuntary tears out of his eyes as he tried to breathe. If it was coleus (and the sting made him think it was) then the damage was done and he was a dead man already. If it was something else—soleirolia perhaps—he might have a fighting chance having thrown most of it up, provided a physician could be found.

If it was Irene who poisoned him it would be coleus, and there would be no physician.

Eugenides managed to draw a deep breath and he slid away from the mess and the spilled wine. His instinct was to curl up against the wall like an injured animal and pray, but he forced himself to his feet and took four stumbling, dizzy steps to the door. He pounded on it with his fist as he fought for enough breath to yell.

“Help,” he gasped, unsure if the dizziness and weight on his chest were his own panic or approaching death. “Help!”

There was no response.

He didn’t know it then, but the guard had run off to help put out the fire in the Mede Ambassador’s rooms.

Eugenides sank to the floor. If no help came he would die here, coleus or not. He had swallowed too much of the wine for it to be otherwise.

Tears pricked at his eyes. He mourned for himself, for the life he had found new reasons to live. He mourned Irene, either his killer and lost already to a stone heart, or soon to be isolated yet again by his death. And he mourned the future. Helen would not take a death by poison to be anything but Attolia’s doing, and the war would continue until either Attolia or Eddis was broken, and whatever remained would be swept away by the Mede.

“ _Oxe Harbrea Sacrus Vax Dragga Onus Savonus Sophos At Ere,_ ” he mouthed, the sound of that supplication failing to reach even his own ears. His eyelids grew heavy, and he thought perhaps the gods had granted him a mercy at last, and given him sleep. Sleep, and a painless death. “Please,” he whispered, and fell into unconsciousness.

It was there that Attolia found him when she opened the door. He had slumped against it, and when it swung open he pitched forward into the hallway.

Irene froze, and it was Helen who rushed forward with a bitten-off cry to press frantic fingers into his pulse point.

“He lives,” she said, relief making her words a breathy gasp. “He only sleeps.”

Eugenides stirred then and when his eyes focused on his queen said, “Wine. Poisoned.”

Eddis stiffened but his hand on her wrist stopped her before she could rise. “Not her,” he said.

“How can you be sure.” It was difficult to speak around the fury curling in her insides.

“Brought you here,” he replied, “better than a physician.”

That didn’t sound like enough proof to Eddis, but Attolia seemed to unfreeze then. “The Mede. Poison implicates me.”

Catching her thought because Eugenides was too incapacitated to do it himself, Eddis said, “it is in his interest to see our alliance fall apart.”

“And to see me dead,” he added.

Attolia swept away as that thought sank in, already calling for her guards to bring a physician, and to run.

Eugenides watched her through blurred eyes. “She is still wearing my earrings?” He asked quietly.

Eddis’s voice was equally soft as she replied, “yes.”

* * *

By the time Eugenides had been tended by the physician and he and Irene had the first fight of their betrothal over whether the pretty girl who brought him more blankets in the infirmary would be his mistress, the spilled wine had dried to tackiness on the chamber floor and there was no way to tell what had been in it. On the evidence of his continued breath it was determined that the poison must have been soleirolia or a similarly weak substance, and Eugenides’s survival was attributed to luck and his own quick thinking. The person who brought the meal was never found, and Eugenides could not remember any details, the moments before the poison blurring in his mind. Even Attolia did not connect a missing servant who must have escaped in the confusion of the fire to the attendant Nahuseresh had so searched for.

The incident was not forgotten, but it paled in importance next to the forging of the wedding treaty and the day Eugenides brought the wrath of his gods down on every window in the palace.

“Eugenides,” Moira had said, “you cannot demand the presence of the Great Goddess. She is not accountable to you.”

But Gen had demanded anyway, though he did not ask about the poison. Perhaps he hadn’t connected it to events orchestrated by the gods, or perhaps it hadn’t seemed important—what were a few minutes of mortal fear and then a few hours in a physician’s care in comparison to a hand?

Or perhaps some part of him had known even then, and had known it was not an answer he could bear to hear spoken yet.

* * *

The king was safe, and laughing at Costis as per usual. Costis didn’t care. He would be laughing at himself too, if he weren't hunched over gasping for breath. He was smiling back at the king as the assassins stepped into view.

To Costis it was as if they appeared from thin air. Four tall strong men, and the king so small on the bench.

There was nothing Costis could do.

He slowed as he approached the fountain. He stared at the body in the basin, and the blood that spread in a cloud through the water. He had once heard a veteran describe a battle that took place in a slow moving stream. “The water was red for a mile—like some curse called down by the old gods,” he had said, and Costis wondered if this too, was a curse. A curse against the stability of Attolia, that the king would die while Eddisian garrisons still dotted the land.

But the body wasn’t the king’s.

Nor was the body on the graveled path, or the one on the grass. Or even the one tossed like rags across the bench, sputtering as it choked on its own blood.

Teleus came up behind him and both of them watched as the king turned toward them. His hand was pressed into his hip—no, his side. Blood welled up between his fingers where they curled around toward his stomach.

He was pale with rage when he asked, “Where are my guards, Teleus?”

He spoke quietly, as if he hadn’t just killed four men.

Or as if he couldn’t get enough breath to speak any louder.

“Where are my guards?” he repeated.

Aris’s “here,” was drowned out by the clatter of Costis’s sword hitting the stones as he dropped it to lunge forward. He caught the king’s fainting form just before he hit the ground.

* * *

“I hate being embarrassed,” the king said, looking over at Costis. He rubbed his side, and Costis knew he was thinking of Sejanus and the wound that had stretched from his left side all the way to his right hip. Costis had heard Petrus quietly whisper to the queen that she should offer a sacrifice to every god of mercy and healing she could think of for the miracle that it had not killed her husband.

_“My first look at it,” he had said, “I was certain the wall of the gut had been opened, but when I looked again it wasn’t. And if I may be honest, Your Majesty, he is recovering more quickly than expected for even a shallow cut.”_

“I saw him on that balcony and I sat there like an idiot wondering what he was doing.” The king shook his head and continued along the wall.

“I was poisoned once,” The king said abruptly, waving his hand for emphasis. Costis nearly choked on his own fear as Attolis wobbled. “Did you know that, Costis?”

Costis didn’t.

“It was soleirolia, or so we thought. Delivered in my wine while I waited for my queen to come for me at Ephrata. I remember I knew I’d been poisoned because I felt it burning on my lips. I made myself throw up.” The king reached the end of one crenellation and hopped to the next before Costis could do anything but think that soleirolia doesn’t burn.

“And I lived, despite that blasted Mede’s best attempt, and we thought that was the end of it,” he spun and looked straight down at Costis.

“But I don’t think it was, the end of it, I mean. See I was talking to Petrus about the quinallums, and he mentioned that soleirolia tastes sweet, like honey and overripe fruit, and my wine was dry and bitter as anything.”

He abruptly went back to his mad walk along the crenellations. “And of the common local poisons, only coleus stings on sensitive skin!” he called, hysteria in his voice.

Costis jogged to catch up. “But nobody survives coleus,” he managed, “there isn’t an antidote.”

“There isn’t,” the king agreed, “except in myth.” But that didn’t seem to ease whatever went through his mind. “Have you ever heard the story of Eugenides stealing the Sky God’s thunderbolts?”

Costis shook his head. He had heard _of_ the story, but didn’t know its details.

“Ah well, suffice it to say that the Sky God gave Eugenides the water of immortality laced with Coleus, but the poison did no real harm in the water of life except to make its taste bitter.”

Costis wasn’t really following, and the king could tell.

“I have been tied to life past a mortal wound before,” he said, “when one of your brethren put his sword clean through me. I didn’t like it then either. It is very, very painful to be trapped in this life when it is time to move on.”

“What are you saying, Your Majesty?” Costis asked, confused.

“Nothing I want to think about.” the king switched topics. “I hope you know that I could once jump from the palace to those roofs over there.” He eyed the empty space and sighed, “If I tried now, I’d probably eviscerate myself when I landed. But it does give me an idea…”

A few minutes later, after the king had admitted the wine was to hide the truth from himself and the gods, and Costis had seen proof that those gods really did walk the earth, the king laughed into Costis’s shoulder. “I am thinking there is more than one reason it is good that you are not waiting on my death to release you from your oath to Philia.”

* * *

“WHY!?” Eugenides screamed, the sound echoing against the rock of the small cave his guard had pushed him into to protect him from the end of the battle. The blade had split him from collarbone to navel, and the blood soaked into the padding on his armor. He was certain now. Certain, and terrified, and enraged beyond belief. “WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO YOU IF I AM THIS? AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE, WHY THIS?” he sobbed, “ _why must I be this?_ ”

No answer came, just as no helping hand had saved him when he fell from his horse at the beginning of the battle. What was done was done, and those who had done it were not accountable to him.

* * *

The once and future queen of Attolia lay back in the covers, as still and pale as the statues she had so resembled in her younger days. Her hand shook as she lifted it, and her husband grasped it in his own. “My King,” she whispered.

He smiled, but tears ran down his face. “My Queen.”

“They offer me only lethium now.”

“Yes,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

“I told them no.”

“I know.”

“You will take care of them?” Her clouded eyes flicked to the chamber door where their children and grandchildren had retired after their own goodbyes.

“For as long as I live,” he promised.

“A long time, then.”

“Yes,” he agreed, as if it pained him. “A very long time.”

“I am sorry.”

He kissed her hand. “This isn’t our farewell. I will see you again.”

“Eugenides…”

“I will,” he insisted, “even if I have to steal you back from death itself.”

“It has been many years since I have mistaken your truth for a lie.”

“Am I lying now?”

“No,” she said, “but this promise you may regret.”

“Never.”

“Very well then,” she murmured, her last words trailing out so softly that if her husband had been but an inch farther away he wouldn’t have heard her, “I’ll be waiting.”

Her eyes slid shut, and after a moment her husband leaned forward and pressed one last kiss to her forehead. “Until we meet again, my love.”

* * *

Eugenides abdicated the throne less than a year after the death of his wife. Their heir was more than old enough to bear the crown, and Eugenides professed a desire to enjoy an easy retirement for a few years and get to know his grandchildren.

He established himself in the Megaron at Ephrata, saying he enjoyed imposing on his dear cousin’s hospitality. When his daughters and daughters-in-law removed their children from the court for a summer break he welcomed them with open arms.

He had been letting his beard and hair grow long for years, but now he let them go completely, pretending their color was a matter of his vanity and the careful application of dyes.

“I worry for you, father,” His youngest daughter confessed during his second summer in the megaron. “You’re all shut up in this drafty place in the winter. Since mother—”

He silenced her with a kiss to her cheek. It was the highest place he could reach; she took after her mother in height. “I’m not on death’s door yet.”

The third summer without Irene, men in dark clothes visited Ephrata.

Eugenia, who was only four, later told her mother and uncle that she woke to loud sounds (the ring of steel on steel) outside her room, and when she slipped from her bed and padded to the door to see what was going on, she had seen her grandfather standing with his back to her. The bottoms of a pair of leather boots were just visible in the dim lighting beyond him, and she remembered Grandfather telling her everything was fine, that she could go back to bed. There had been a sword in his hand, and she had wondered if he was perhaps doing late night practice with one of her older brothers.

She rubbed her sleepy eyes and said. “Love you, Grandfather.”

“I love you too, darling. Now go back to sleep.”

She had done so, and didn’t know until the next morning that only a few minutes later a guard watched two bodies tumble from the highest point on the megaron’s wall.

Only one was ever found.

* * *

Basil stood on the end of the docks, his arms crossed over his chest, looking down his nose at the young man before him. “This kind of voyage isn’t for the faint of heart, kid. It could be years before we see a friendly harbor.” Privately, Basil didn’t think the kid could take it. He looked far too young to really understand what that would be like, to return and find things at home had changed while he was gone. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty, and he looked like one of those fisherman’s sons who thought he could sail but in truth hadn't gone more than twenty miles from home in his life.

The kid’s lips quirked upward, and he stared at Basil uncowed. “I think I can handle it.”

“Your bravado doesn’t impress me.” Basil informed him.

“I can fight,” the kid said, “if we get attacked I’ll be an asset. And I’m good with my hands, and I know how to sail.”

Basil raised an eyebrow at the kid, but especially at his hook, which he was making no effort to hide.

“This is sharper than your sword, and more useful where we’re going.” He wasn’t backing down an inch. “I’m serious. If you take me on you won’t regret it.”

Basil sighed. He really, truly didn’t want to be responsible for the shock the kid would have when he got back. Realizing your relatives were dead, married, grown, or just changed tended to shift your perspective, and suddenly the arguments that drove you away from them didn’t matter so much anymore.

Not that Basil knew from experience.

“Besides,” the kid wheedled, “We’re resupplying in Port Royal, right? I have family out there. I’d like to meet them.”

Basil wavered. “If you change your mind in the next couple days we’ll drop you in Gants. We’re picking up more people there.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

Basil grunted. “What’s your name?”

“Gen.”

“Gen…?”

“Just Gen. You won’t be interested in the rest.”

Maybe the kid was a criminal. It didn’t matter to Basil anyway. Even the dumbest criminals knew you couldn’t do anything when you were stuck on an exploratory voyage. You needed everyone to be working like the gears in a well-oiled watch just to survive.

“Alright ‘just Gen.’ Welcome aboard.”

* * *

Chloe dropped her keys in the bowl by the door, and they clattered on the empty ceramic. Her girlfriend must be out, then. She flicked the lightswitch on and waved in her guest. “Welcome to my humble home,” she said.

Gen followed her in, blinking in the stark light. He peered at the tiny and outdated (but clean) kitchen and the flaky couch and the big windows that looked out on the darkening street. “Nice place.”

She shrugged. “It was close to my work.”

“What _do_ you do, by the way? You said you were only a part time student on icebreaker day, but I never asked.”

She laughed, “It does seem like we only ever talk about class.” She set her bag on her couch and went to start the coffee pot. She doubted they’d get through this project without caffeine. “I work in a print shop, actually. I got the job during one of my summers the first time I tried for my degree, and just stuck with it even when I had to drop out.”

“It might be rude to ask—”

She waved it off. “It’s okay. My mom got sick and I dropped out to take care of her.”

He set his bag on the kitchen island. “I see. Is she…” he paused, “...you have a pink ribbon on your keychain.”

She focused on the coffee machine and forced her voice not to shake. “She passed away two years ago. And yeah. It runs in my family.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is. We were actually really worried about paying for the treatments until a random great uncle of mine I’ve never met swanned in out of nowhere and basically wrote us a blank check.” The coffee machine dinged and she opened the mug cabinet. “That’s actually why I’m even able to go back to school now. Thanks to him, we didn’t even wipe out my mom’s savings.”

He smiled at her. “I’m glad to hear that—I’m glad I got to meet you.”

Chloe blushed. She hadn’t made a lot of friends this quarter, being so much older than most of the other sophomores. Gen being in her psych class was a godsend. He also, (thank her family’s god) had never flirted with her even a little bit, nor made any comment about her having a girlfriend other than “I’d love to meet her, if we ever find the time to hang out off-campus.”

It was nice to have a friend like Gen, but nice as it was he more often communicated in sarcasm and friendly insults than verbal displays of open affection, and his statement caught her off guard.

“You too,” She said, too late. “This paper isn’t going to write itself.”

“Snacks and coffee first.” He demanded, and she obligingly handed him his mug.

Three hours later she pushed her laptop away from her and stretched. Her spine popped and Gen looked up to grin at her. “Time to call it a night?”

She yawned. “Probably a good idea, unless you want to stay the night in the spare room. I should warn you it’s full of paintings though.”

“You paint?” he asked. He unstrapped his prosthetic hand and started shaking out his limbs as if he had pins and needles.

She watched his prosthetic on the counter, transfixed for a moment before she replied. “Yeah, it’s a hobby.”

“What subject?”

It took her a second to parse what he meant. “It’s a little embarrassing.”

He waited.

“When, well, when we had that great uncle appear out of nowhere, my mom and I realized we didn’t actually know much about our family history.” She started to stack up their project papers neatly to give her hands something to do and to distract her from the embarrassing parts. She rarely even talked to her girlfriend about this. “So when mom was too sick to leave the house we would go over old family photos and records to try to piece some stuff together. After a while we connected with a cousin whose branch of the family apparently has all this deep family lore going back centuries—have you ever heard of Eugenides and Irene?”

“In history classes once or twice, yeah,” he said dryly.

“Turns out my mom and I are directly descended from them.” God, she hoped she didn’t sound like one of the people she’d come across online in her genealogical searches, the nutcases who believed that they ought to be royalty because they’d discovered a distant relation was. She just thought the history was interesting. “I’ve been painting since high school, but after we learned about that I started doing—well—a lot of portraits of my mom dressed like queen Irene.” she rubbed the back of her neck. “We knew she was terminal then, and I wanted to have images of her that felt like they would _last_ , you know? Oil paintings last. Photos feel more…” She fumbled for a word. “Ephemeral.”

He nodded.

“After my mom passed, I kept doing them, but I also started doing my actual ancestors, not just my mom. Turns out we’re related to a lot of historical figures because of the way royals intermarried back then—technically I'm a very very distant cousin of the current Epidish royal family.” She winced. That probably did make her sound like one of the nutcases.

He raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “So I should call you ‘Your Highness’ then?”

She laughed, relieved he’d taken it in stride. “Anyway everything in the spare room is just a lot of portraits of people I’m related to. Is that weird?”

“Can I see them?” he asked, skipping over her question entirely.

She looked at him. “Sure, I guess. I mean, they’re not great.”

“I’m sure they’re lovely.”

She hummed, not wanting him to form expectations. For some reason she couldn’t bear it if Gen was disappointed in her.

He waited politely for her to open the guest room door and wave her hand at the insides. “Tah-da!” she said, “don’t touch anything. A lot of it is in the process of drying.”

He gave her a look like _who do you take me for,_ and clasped his hand around his wrist behind his back. He’d left his prosthetic in the kitchen.

He peered at the paintings, stepping carefully around the easels and the ones laid on the floor. She waited nervously for his judgement.

“These are lovely,” he said at last. His voice was strained, and for a second she was afraid he was holding in laughter until he turned and she could see moisture welling up in his eyes. “Really lovely.”

“Gen?” she asked, mildly alarmed.

“Sorry I just.” He broke off, stopping to stare at two paintings laid out side by side on the plastic that covered the bed.

One was Chloe’s mother, wearing Queen Irene’s famous red gown and rubies. The other was the queen herself, older than she was in most depictions. She was seated on the corner of her bed with her hair down. Chloe had painted her tired and wan but smiling. The pose came from a photo of her mother just a few months before she passed away. It had felt right, humanizing the famous queen in the same way she immortalized her mother.

Many historians thought she had died from some form of cancer.

“I…” Gen said, releasing his wrist to hover his fingertips a few inches above the painting of Irene. “I lost my wife.”

She reeled back. A dozen questions were caught in her throat, but what came out was, “You were married?”

He tore his gaze away from the painting as if the act physically hurt him, and he covered his face with his hand. “I’m a little older than I look,” he said, but his normal dry tone was gone, “and I was very young when we wed.”

“What happened?” she found herself whispering. She wondered how she hadn’t known. “Was it—”

“A lot like your mother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So, so, so,” said Gen.

“You miss her,” She said, speaking from experience.

“Yes. And more so whenever something seems to have a remnant of her in it.” He looked at her painting again. “This is beautiful,” he murmured, and she wondered if he saw his wife in the old queen the same way Chloe saw her mother.

“You’ll have to let me buy one of these one day,” he continued, seeming to shake himself out of the sorrow that had wrapped around him like a shroud. “You really have a gift.”

She blushed. “My girlfriend wants to hang them in the living room and show them off to everybody, but I’m always too scared.”

“You should do it. Just like you should _introduce me to your girlfriend_ next time.”

She laughed. “I promise, we’ll have a real get together with actual dinner and no homework.”

He grinned at her. “Deal.”

After he left for the night she went back to the guest room to turn out the lights. Pausing in the doorway she saw the unfinished portrait resting on her easel. It was supposed to be the king Eugenides, to match the half-dozen paintings she already had of his wife. The sketch she had done almost six months ago, basing the likeness on a few portraits of the old Annux and the image stamped into Attolian coins from the era.

She had done her best to make it accurate, working on it here and there between other projects, but she hadn’t realized until that moment how much it had grown to look like Gen.

* * *

Nadine rolled out of bed at the sound of her alarm and dragged herself to her desk. She hated, _hated_ trying to consult on an excavation while also teaching class halfway across the world. It meant late nights and early mornings and the ever-dreaded both-at-the-same-time.

Luckily her emails this morning were normal for the most part. No catastrophe had happened while she slept, at least.

It only took her a few minutes to deal with most of the run-of-the-mill undergrads asking for extensions and grad students who had already arrived in Attolia asking her to settle an argument over the seriation of one ceramic style or another. She was feeling pretty good about her before-8am efficiency when a different sort of message brought her up short.

Instead of saying “sick—going to miss class” or “Catherine stole my Marshalltown” (grad students, she thought, were worse than kindergarteners) the subject line read: “possible reference to location of archaic Eddisian cave site.”

She blinked a few times and opened it.

> From: moirawhite@egu.edu
> 
> Subject: possible reference to location of archaic Eddisian cave site
> 
> To: normentiedes@lpu.edu
> 
> Body Text:
> 
> Dr. Nadine Ormentides,
> 
> I am working on a book concerning the history of the Eddisian state, and in my research came across something that may interest you. I was able to gain access to the private collection of the De Actuis family and discovered among their papers a copy of Plax’s Hespiriad dating to just before the eruption. The copyist’s note at the beginning claims it was made as a gift for a person called “Dite” based on the version of the text available in Eddis’s royal library.
> 
> The only difference I noted from other copies of the period was an extra verse in chapter six (images attached) making reference to the actual location of the cave entrance used by Meridite and Hespira in relation to visible Eddisian geographic formations. I know dig season is just beginning and you’re still teaching at the moment, but when you arrive at the site you might want to check if a cave is actually there.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> M

After about twenty minutes of poring over the attached photos, Nadine was on hold with her airline while she began drafting an email of her own to the De Actuis family to ask for access to their collection. Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to get a long layover in Ferria.

* * *

The excavations of the city of Eddis had been going on for centuries now, ever since the city had been rediscovered under the ash flow of the Sacred Mountain.

Eugenides never visited. He thought there was little but despair to be gained from seeing his lost home in ruins.

He had seen an image once—an advertisement for a traveling exhibit—of a well-preserved flat-backed pocket watch, its front open to proudly display the carved name of its maker.

Gen had turned his face away.

Today however, he looked upon Eddis with dry eyes and a steady gaze.

Several months before the excavation had made news when the archeologists located the mouth of a cave, or rather a tunnel, leading deep into the Sacred Mountain. The archeological community was excited. They thought that considering the importance of the mountain in the Eddisian religion and the stories set in the tunnels beneath it, that there might be ancient ritual centers deep within the rock.

Eugenides was excited for a different reason.

He waited in a nearby tree as the excavation halted for the night. The caves themselves had been little explored, as the graduate students doing the brunt of the work weren’t experienced cavers, but in the area around the mouth of the cave the earth had been torn open as if by the hand of a god. Already there had been finds, artifacts dating to strata even older than the nearby city. Shards of ritual wine cups, cut stones that had once been an altar, the rusted remains of a thousand-year-old sword. Information, to the archaeologists. Information long lost to everyone but the man watching them between the needles of a fir tree younger by far than he was.

When the archeologists left for the night they closed the gates of the temporary fence around the site and padlocked them. The watch that protected the main city from looters and opportunistic tourists would stop by on their patrol, but there was no dedicated guard. It was ridiculously loose security, by Eugenides’s standards.

Then again, a thousand guards and their dogs could not have stopped him.

He dropped to the ground and gathered his tools from under the brush. His lockpicks, his measuring tape, his lantern, his pry bar. The tools of a thief had changed little in the centuries since he braved the Aracthus.

He slipped easily under the fence where the ground was uneven and stole past the square pits into the mouth of the cave. The moonlight penetrated mere feet inside, and the black yawning depths beyond it could have held anything.

He hoped they did.

Legend always held that there were many paths within the Sacred Mountain. There were the forges, the well-trodden paths of Horreon and Hespira, but there were other ways as well. Deeper ways. Narrow paths carved through stone and shadow that lead to places where only the dead walked. No mortal could find those ways without a guide.

Eugenides was not mortal.

* * *

There was a hand beckoning her forward, and a flash of a smile in the dark.

“My love,” a voice whispered, “My Queen.”

Irene felt as if she were waking from a long, long dream.

“Eugenides,” she breathed, and almost choked on the breath. How long had it been since she last breathed? “You kept your promise.”

“Haven’t I always told you that I can steal anything? This one simply took me a while.”

She felt wetness building in her eyes, trailing down her face. “I shall never doubt you again.”

It was still far too dark to see, but she felt a hand brush her hair from her face, and warm lips pressed to hers. It wasn’t the kiss of rescuer and rescued, or even kiss of two people getting to know each other after growing apart. There would be time for those. This kiss was the kiss of a husband reuniting with his wife after a journey of unfathomed distance.

They split apart and Irene sucked great gasps of air into her lungs, feeling as if every breath thawed something frozen solid inside her.

The hand slid from her hair to intertwine its fingers with hers.

“Now come on,” he said, “we have some other friends to find before we go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some scenes are changed versions of scenes from _The Queen of Attolia_ , pages 241-246 and 271, and _The King of Attolia_ , pages 163-165 and 343, and those scenes pull direct and paraphrased quotes from canon, including a quote from page 213 of _The Thief_.
> 
> In the vein of coleus being a real but not-poisonous-IRL plant, I googled “non-toxic house plants native to the mediteranean” for the name of my alternate poison. I picked soleirolia because it looked/sounded a little like a mashup of Irene and Attolia, and I thought that would be fun.
> 
> Port Royal was the only European settlement in the Americas that might retain its name in the TQT universe since it's not named after anyone. It's a port. It’s royal. Though it’s in a slightly different place, what with TQT geography. The history there is very different due to 1. The lack of Christianity, and 2. The nonexistence of certain individuals named Columbus, but there was probably some form of contact between the two hemispheres of the world within a couple of centuries of the time it happened IRL.
> 
> Come yell with me about TQT on my [Tumblr](https://chimaerakitten.tumblr.com).


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